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energy savings at home

Improving your home's energy efficiency with ENERGY STAR can help to lower high energy bills, improve comfort and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Learn about the many ways to save in your home and track your progress with "My ENERGY STAR" - your new dashboard to savings.

new homes & apartments

A new home or apartment that has earned the ENERGY STAR label has undergone a process of inspections, testing, and verification to meet strict requirements set by the US EPA. ENERGY STAR certified homes and apartments use significantly less energy than typical new homes and apartments while delivering better comfort, quality, and durability.

Variable Speed Fan Drives

Description

CRAC (computer room air conditioning) unit fans consume a lot of power and tend to account for 5% to 10% of a data center's total energy use.20 (Typically, only cooling compressors use more energy in a data center.) Most CRAC units are unable vary their fan speeds with the data center server load, which tends to fluctuate. Because data center environments constantly change, variable-speed fan drives (or VSDs for short) should be used wherever possible. Retrofits of many CRAC and CRAH (computer room air handling) units are available.

To sufficiently cool equipment and provide more than one backup unit, data centers concurrently operate multiple CRACs around the clock. This can cause short-cycled cooling and extreme static pressures in the plenum, wasting energy. (A CRAC unit compressor that short-cycles turns itself on and off too frequently—thus reducing efficiency.) VSDs save energy when the data center load fluctuates.

Many energy-efficiency measures—hot aisle/cold aisle, containment, free cooling—depend on VSDs being installed on CRAC and CRAH units to fully realize their energy-saving potential.

Savings and Costs

A reduction of 10% in fan speed reduces that fan's use of electricity by approximately 25%. A 20% speed reduction yields electrical savings of roughly 45%.

Considerations

Not all manufacturers have retrofit kits for their older CRAC and CRAH units. The best option may be to ensure that your next CRAC or CRAH comes with variable speed fans.

When retrofitting, reduced fan speed can lead to condensation and freezing on the coils if not closely monitored. Newer CRACs and CRAHs with variable-speed fans use digital compressors that slow down with fan speed.